Tuesday, 4 November 2008
Madelyn Payne Dunham - RIP
Andrew Sullivan:
Obama was so right to make sure he spent time with her before she passed on. But what an emotional blow on election eve for the candidate from Illinois. He has survived this campaign with remarkable emotional maturity and self-control. I just wish this didn't have to add to it. None of his parents will witness tomorrow. But somewhere my faith teaches me: they know already. Maybe Toot couldn't wait for the actual results. Maybe she's now a few steps ahead even of Chuck Todd. May she rest in peace. She did good.
Indeed, she did good, and we will owe her - one day!
Monday, 3 November 2008
Money on Obama - a Ugandans perspectve!
Barack Obama will be elected America’s president today. I say this not because of the many opinion polls that suggest he has the US presidential election in the bag, or because his ancestors’ village in Kenya is across from mine in Uganda (in a manner of speaking), and so objectivity has deserted me.
And I don’t fear that come November 4, the over-flogged “Bradley effect”, call it the white racist vote, will break out and see his rival the curmudgeonly John McCain wipe the floor with the Illinois senator.
About three years ago, I was in the US visiting with my brother and his lovely wife. One day we were driving from Washington to Maryland where they live, when he took a detour to show me the neighbourhoods where some of Washington’s moneyed and well-heeled class live.
As we drove through, I noticed quite a number of black people walking their dogs and cats, and pushing prams.
“The brothers and sisters,” I said, “seem to have made good. The first time I came to the US, I don’t remember seeing so many black people living in rich neighbourhoods as I do these days”.
Richard, who had just returned from New York on assignment for the company he was working for then, said he thought “black America is disappearing”.
He said he had just been on Wall Street, and that what struck him most was that far more black people were working in the big financial companies there than most people would imagine.
Then he said something that I kept thinking about long after. He said that he was intrigued that “there is no difference between a black and white Wall Street operator. They are all cut-throat,” he said, “and I think some of the brothers are hungrier and nastier than the white guys”.
What really existed, he argued, despite all the talk about racism was “rich black, Asian, Hispanic and white Americans on the one hand, and poor black, Asia, Hispanic, and white folks on the other”.
Two years later, when white musician Eminem became the biggest rapper in the US, a music that was born out of protest and the anger of poor black neighbourhoods in American cities, I thought Richard was right after all.
Black vote
When Obama threw his hat into the ring, I watched to see if he could make a naked run for the black vote. When he didn’t, I knew he had taken a big step towards winning the White House.
Reason? There are simply not enough black votes on their own to help anyone win a presidential election in America even if they got 100 per cent of it. It is not rocket science to figure that, but it takes a lot of courage to act on it as Obama did.
The Rev Jesse Jackson, a politician with far more street credibility than Obama, didn’t when he contested the Democratic Party nominations in 1984 and 1988.
Secondly, too many non-white people fear to be thought of as “being white”. If they are black, they tend to turn their backs on what, erroneously, are considered “white traits”. Thus, instead of meticulous organisation, they choose spontaneity.
Instead of the cool unemotional British upper lip (people like Presidents Kibaki and Paul Kagamme of Rwanda almost have it), they go for passion and exuberance.
They are not content with the crowds they are talking to nodding in agreement or crying in muted emotional outbreaks. They want wild cheers.
Flawless campaign
Obama didn’t walk that road. So when it became apparent that he had set up an awesome flawless campaign operation, and a lethal fundraising machine, I put my money on him.
When he slipped behind in opinion polls after McCain got a big bounce from the Republican party convention, Obama didn’t lose his cool.
Other politicians, like former President Bill Clinton, would go off to a club, wear dark glasses and blow the saxophone with a band. If Obama had done that, he would have fitted the stereotype of a go-happy black man.
He didn’t become excited and stayed the course. McCain, however, hasn’t. When he fell behind in opinion polls, he became a nasty table banger who frightens the children.
Can Obama lose? Mathematically, yes. But I would still ask: “Where the hell did that come from?”
Obama's grandma dead! RIP!
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's grandmother died of cancer, he said in a statement on Monday, a little more than a week after Obama interrupted the White House race to say goodbye to her in Hawaii.
"It is with great sadness that we announce that our grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, has died peacefully after a battle with cancer," Obama said in a joint statement with his sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng. "She was the cornerstone of our family, and a woman of extraordinary accomplishment, strength, and humility."
Dunham helped raise Obama from the age of 10 while his mother was working in Indonesia, and Obama took an emotional 22-hour trip to Hawaii to visit her on October 23 and 24.
Getting to know Barack!
A must read!
Have I become so addicted to polls, pundits, and projections that I will actually miss them after the polls close on November 4?
What will we talk about?
There will always be the results to dissect, who won, who lost, where and why? And the down ticket races will move into the conversation: Senate, House, and Governor's races.
But the suspense will be gone. Right now, about two days before the results will be known, I say to myself, "Thank God." I can't bear to wait much longer.
Many complain that the campaign has been too long, too expensive, and too vituperative. And they are right. American elections, unlike elections in Parliamentary systems, wear out both the candidates and the voters. In a Parliamentary system, the Prime Minister, who is also the head of the party, can "call" an election between four and six weeks before the vote. That's it. Campaigns -from start to finish--take place in a matter of weeks, not years. There are no primary campaigns in these countries.
It is our process, intensified by the hunger of the media to report on the next election years before it occurs, which results in an almost endless campaign season.
On the plus side, as I look back on a year ago, when we were just warming up for the primaries, I conclude that there is a strong chance that Barack Obama would not have won the Democratic nomination if the process had been more shorter and more efficient. Neither would Hillary Clinton have come in second place.
These were two non-traditional candidates, compared to the usual cast of white men who had won Presidential primaries throughout our history. We had to take our time to get to know them.
I remember my impressions during the early debates when I was a Hillary Clinton supporter. Some bias crept into my reaction to Barack Obama, but I felt he was not ready. He did not seem Presidential, compared to the others in the Democratic Primary line-up.
In a year's time, we have had the opportunity to watch him grow, in stature, in competence, and in confidence--both his and ours. This long election season has given the voters an opportunity to get used to the different portrait of an American President.
The qualities that once jumped out to us--that he was African American and that he was young--have disappeared for many voters. Not only has he changed; we also have changed. We feel, over this period of time, that we have gotten to know him, and he, in turn, has gotten to know the American voter, in all his and her permutations.
Yes, there is a silly side and a nasty side to campaigns which we would like to forget. The process is not always fair, the press is sometimes lazy or biased or both. The endless commercials grate on our nerves and insult our intelligence.
But in 2008 that is the price we had to pay to nominate and quite possibly elect, a non-traditional candidate.
As a woman who has been elected to public office nine times, I know I learned my most valuable lessons on the campaign trail. The people I met in their homes, factories, farms, and in the streets, educated me. Their stories did not just become sound bites in the manner of Joe the so-called Plumber. They gave me insights into why I was running and what I hoped to accomplish.
On a different scale, that is what this long campaign has done for Barack Obama. All those crowds, all those handshakes, all those living rooms, helped to educate him, to combine soaring rhetoric with specific substance. And the long primary battle with Hillary Clinton, as he himself has said, made him a stronger candidate and will, if he is elected, make him a better President.
We, the voters have traveled on a steep learning curve as well. This man is no stranger to us any more. The 30-minute paid political commercial enabled us to cultivate a longer attention span. The fact that 33 million Americans watched it is testimony to both the candidate for giving us depth and breadth instead of a few sentences, and to the voters for giving him their full and serious attention.
Barack Obama could not be where he is today, on the brink of a projected victory, without the blessing and the burden of this long campaign. So I will be patient for a day longer, believing that it will have been worth the wait.
Amen!
Vote on the 5th?
A registered Democrat in Pennsylvania writes the Huffington Post to report that she has received an anonymous phone call telling her she should go to the polls on Wednesday.
"I received a phone call from an unidentified caller yesterday telling me that because of the expected high voter turnout, Democrats will need to vote on Wednesday, November 5th," she writes.
The calls are obviously misleading, as voting ends on Tuesday. And apparently they have been going on for quite some time. This past Friday the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported "robocalls making the rounds in Pittsburgh region" disseminating the misleading information. The reader who contacted Huffington Post was from the Philadelphia suburbs, at the opposite end of the state.
Contacted by the Huffington Post, a spokesman for the Obama campaign's Pennsylvania operations said he was aware of the misleading calls but "not worried about" their impact.
You can't make this up!
Sunday, 2 November 2008
Lewis wins 2008 F1 championship!
McLaren's Lewis Hamilton became the youngest world champion in For
mula One history by the skin of his teeth after a nail-biting Brazilian Grand Prix.
The 23-year-old Englishman's title rival Felipe Massa won the race in his Ferrari but Hamilton grabbed the fifth place he needed at the last corner.
A late-race rain shower looked to have cost Hamilton the title when he dropped to sixth after a stop for wet tyres.
But he passed Toyota's Timo Glock as they entered the pit straight.
Renault's Fernando Alonso, the previous youngest champion, was second ahead of Massa's team-mate Kimi Raikkonen and Toro Rosso's Sebastian Vettel.
Hamilton's success buries the ghosts of last year, when after a remarkable debut season he let slip a massive lead in the final two races and Raikkonen sneaked in to win the title.
Continue reading story here >